Would You Let the I.R.S. Prepare Your Taxes?

But Intuit’s opposition to return-free filing has been ferocious. In the last five years, according to disclosure documents, Intuit spent nearly $13 million on federal lobbying. That is about the same amount that companies many times its size have spent on lobbying. Apple, which has an annual income about 40 times that of Intuit, also spent about $13 million on lobbying in the same period. While documents show that Intuit lobbies on several issues, including immigration, cybersecurity and intellectual property law, the company’s largest lobbying contracts all involve the issue of tax administration.

.. In 2006, using an independent expenditure group known as the Alliance for California’s Tomorrow, Intuit sank $1 million into the race for California state comptroller in support of Tony Strickland, a Republican who opposed ReadyReturn. Mr. Strickland lost to John Chiang, a Democrat, but Intuit’s money was nevertheless effective.

“It was a huge signal to politicians everywhere how much Intuit cares about this,” Mr. Bankman said. “People in other states who had been interested in it started saying, ‘We just don’t want to pick a fight with Intuit.’  ”

 

Europe Takes Aim at Deals Created to Escape Taxes

The laws in Netherlands shield a variety of profits from taxation, making it attractive for big multinational companies like Starbucks, Google and IBM to set up offices. Even rock stars like the Rolling Stones and U2 have taken advantage of Dutch tax shelters.

The same goes for Luxembourg, Bermuda, Ireland and the British Caribbean countries like the Cayman Islands. Along with the Netherlands, those places rank among the top destinations for foreign direct investment from the United States, according to a review of data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis that shows how entrenched tax avoidance strategies have become.

.. In some ways, authorities are performing a futile task: As officials move to close certain loopholes, others are likely to pop up in their place.

A Piketty Protégé’s Theory on Tax Havens

Mr. Zucman estimates — conservatively, in his view — that $7.6 trillion — 8 percent of the world’s personal financial wealth — is stashed in tax havens. If all of this illegally hidden money were properly recorded and taxed, global tax revenues would grow by more than $200 billion a year, he believes.

.. According to Mr. Zucman’s calculations, 20 percent of all corporate profits in the United States are shifted offshore, and tax avoidance deprives the government of a third of corporate tax revenues. Corporate tax avoidance has become so widespread that from the late 1980s until now, the effective corporate tax rate in the United States has dropped from 30 percent to 15 percent, Mr. Zucman found, even though the tax rate hasn’t changed.

.. The idea of the rich world’s indebtedness is “an illusion caused by tax havens,” Mr. Zucman wrote in a paper published last year. In fact, if offshore assets were properly measured, Europe would be a net creditor, and American indebtedness would fall from 18 percent of gross domestic product to 9 percent.

.. He finds it “no coincidence” that the era of widespread tax evasion began in the Reagan era, with the rise of the idea that government is a beast that must be starved.

.. only an international approach has a chance of stopping tax evasion, he says. Its most important feature would be a global financial registry, which would track wealth ownership in the same way that Americans routinely record real estate holdings now.